Articles from my personal Journals
My seven-year journey to becoming a published memoirist happened while we lived in Athens, Cairo and Bangkok. Here I write about life as it happens, living abroad, being a mother, wife, sister and daughter as well as living a writer’s life.
If you wonder what it’s like being a published author, and how to write a memoir, from therapy on the page (the first drafts) through revision, editing, book design, publishing, marketing and selling your memoir, you will love these articles.
The shitty first drafts of these articles first appeared in my private journals and morning pages. When you sign up for my biweekly Cercular you’ll never miss an article. Who knows, it might just be the spark of inspiration you need to write.
Welcome to my Life & Memoir Writing Journey 🧡
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Dee Ryan for Mayor of Limerick
“The extent to which you know your inner child is proportional to how well you know yourself.” Vig’s Trauma Theory
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Women’s Day, Mother’s Day & Voting for Change
“The extent to which you know your inner child is proportional to how well you know yourself.” Vig’s Trauma Theory
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Edward Scissorhands A Trauma Theory
“The extent to which you know your inner child is proportional to how well you know yourself.” Vig’s Trauma Theory
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Moving Chaos
We arrived in Ireland on Friday 4 August and caught the train to my mother-in-law, thinking we would stay for a few days – that’s not what happened. On Sunday we all got in her car for the hour-long drive down the road to ‘visit’ the house. Our house! I haven’t been inside it for…
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What my readers are saying
… omg. Tears, Laughter, Delight and so much more. I love Speak #TRUTH Lies. What a Read! Fantastic! Later, Cliona sent me this WhatsApp message: “I am beyond proud of your beautiful memoir. It is amazing! So beautiful, so honest, and so raw. At times the pain chimes through the pages. I love the ending…
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Time to Say Goodbye
This week, in Athens, a dream came true. With the gift of two tickets, we got to see a hero in concert. Would he sing our song, we wondered? Time to Say Goodbye became ‘our’ song during the Covid years. Confined to the apartment, on our first New Year’s Eve in Athens, we blasted the…
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Make a Scene
Think of the first paragraph of your memoir as the opening scene of a movie or tv series. Every story, every movie, every bookstarts with a scene and after the first scene follows another scene. Scene after scene after scene makes a chapter. Here are my fundamental elements for creating great scenes. Every scene has…
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Making Memoir
I can’t believe I’m here, that I’ve made it this far. It’s been seven years! Seeing ‘The End’ at the bottom of that page, three weeks ago, sparked excitement all over. Today I received feedback from my rock band of writer-friends after they read my memoir – for the first time. My band of sisters have sprinkled…
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❝The Burning Light of Two Stars.❞
Meet the Author In her 2003 book, ❝I Thought We’d Never Speak Again❞ @laurasaridavis Laura writes about how it went, when she interviewed her mother, Temme, to get her side of their story journey from #Estrangement to #Reconciliation. The way she sets up the scene is literary breathtaking and deserves to be studied by novelists…
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Turning anxiety into self-awareness
I’m living in a turbulent time right now. Aren’t we all you might say and if you do, then you are right and I hope this life lesson of mine, might help a little to relieve your stress and anxiety.
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How to create a safe vessel to write from
I’m trying, I’m really trying to get on with revision, transcribing voice notes and rewriting, while the drilling continues upstairs. our Athens building block is incredibly noisy with constant building works ongoing. I’ve my AirPods in at high volume streaming Smooth Jazz on Spotify. I don’t think I can do it . . . I’m…
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Feeling Frazzled
I’m eating chocolate and feel lazy and fat, her message said, I hope you feel better than me. Nop, I’m not doing any better than you, I wrote back. . . . Swap chocolate for ouzo (while in Greece) and we’re in the same canoe.
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Hope
It’s re-write time and from the muddy pool of shitty drafts, a small jewel appears – at least I think it’s a jewel. I rinse it, I dry it and polished it down to the bone. What’s left is a mere smidgen of a vignette, but it gives me hope. – A different kind of…
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Letting go of Knowing
Since last week’s blog I’ve pondered the question of wether I can truly let go of knowing, of control, of my need to be right, even if it’s just some of the time.
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Connect before you React
I adapted this from Dr Shefali, who says ‘Connect before you Correct’ as a parent. I love that woman and I’m so grateful for how her work in the world and how it gives me a chance at becoming a better mother. To Connect before I React is still a lesson I’m learning. It’s not…
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Not OK
Not ok is ok Don’t be okwhen it’s not okLean into the pain in your heartwhen it breaksfor the smallest things;a mum who says ‘wait’ when you need her ‘now’a friend who says ‘no’ when you need a ‘Hell Yeah!’when you feel belittled, and not invitedwhen you feel not good enough, or out of placenot…
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Charity – The Gift of Giving
In 1910 Wallace D. Wattles wrote; “The poor do not need charity; they need inspiration. Charity only sends them a loaf of bread to keep them alive in their wretchedness, or gives them an entertainment to make them forget for an hour or two.” I wonder if Mr Wattles foresaw the big business charity have…
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The True North of Memoir
I didn’t realise revising my memoir would be this hard or take this long, but now I see what I’m here to learn. As I reread one of the though chapters I wondered, was it the abuse, or that fear we all feel when something unacceptable and wrong happens to us at an age before…
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Illness the New Normal
In 2013 a study by the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) found that over 95% of the world’s population has health problems. Lower back pain and major depression ranked among the top ten greatest contributors to disability, causing more health loss than diabetes, chronic lung disease, and asthma combined. This is a bleak picture, one…
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Mormor and The Queen Mother
On this day (April 9) seventeen years ago, the most nurturing and positively influential woman, to me, took her last breath and left this life.
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Why Don’t you like me?
I always thought there where two kinds of people – those with and those (like me) without confidence. Those WITH confidence seemed more genuine. I never thought confident/genuine people liked me, maybe it was because I ‘felt’ fake. I was definitely not my self – I didn’t know how. I hadn’t even heard the word…
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The art and science of achieving goals
Apparently, most new year resolutions have fallen by the wayside by February, so what can March offer us? Is it better to sit back and wait for another year before making a new resolution, a new commitment to move closer to the life we really want? How about making a new resolution just for March?…
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Getting in sync with the teenage brain
How brain research helped me be a better parent to my teenage daughter. This week I had the great fortune to attend a keynote talk in the CAC Theatre by clinical psychologist Dr. David Gleason. In his talk entitled ‘Getting in sync with the teenage brain’ Dr. Gleason drove home the effects performance pressure can…
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A Good Enough New Year Resolution
Whenever I struggle to keep up with my plans I ask myself; – have I broken down the steps into small enough chunks?’ I’ve been writing this book for more than a year and only now do I start to see all the pieces come together, – well, – sort off. Learning to dissect a big…
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Flow
There is nothing quite so luscious as getting lost in the FLOW, where you forget that you haven’t washed your hair in 3 days and you have a daughter in school, who forgot her lunch money and sent you an SOS email, which you forget to check, and Facebook and Instagram is as far from…
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Light a Candle
I light a candle, defusing healing incense into the space around me, and settle with my writing. It feels like I’ve been gone forever. I’ve been busy, things needed doing. A Nile Holiday, a video course, parties to go to, friends to meet, a blog to write, tenant turnover in Ireland, and figuring out (baby…
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Egypt ⛵️ Nile Cruise Aswan – Luxor
It’s been 12 years since the last time we went on holidays, just the two of us, without the Awesome Kid. We tingle with excitement walking through the school gate at 9 on Sunday morning. It’s the first time since Ruby started Middle School I’ve been let walk her onto campus, and today I get…
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The Captain’s Island
Dear Ones, [SEPTEMBER 2018] You may know, my father, The Captain, died in July and I went to Norway for his . . . . . . . – no, I didn’t just go for the funeral or to bury him, I went to find him or to find something I’ve lost. And I did.…
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Karl Ove’s Struggle
I’m reading ‘Some Rain Must Fall’ by my fellow countryman and memoirist Karl Ove Knugsgaard at the moment. It starts with his student year at the Writing Academy in Bergen. The same year I studied Graphic Design in Stavanger. This is the 5th book and his writing, which dazzled me from the start, hugely improves…
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A week before The Funeral
Dear Ones, This is one of those strange times in my life, when all I can do is lean into love and be ok with all the questions. My Dad was not a good father, still he was the father I had, he was my only father. Some believe we pick our parents so they…
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Fear
Today feels like starting all over agin. The surge of fear swells up from my gut like burning indigestion. Halting my breath as if I’m reacting to a tiger about to eat me alive. Striking at my hip and shoulder where I carry my emotions like numb pain. At first, fear so vivid, I can…
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Judging Without Why
Last weekend, having lunch, I saw a good mum feeding her 10 year old daughter. It wasn’t a very healthy lunch and the daughter could do with healthy. I judged her, and I don’t even know her WHY. A few days ago I went on a field trip with Ruby’s school. The day was extra…
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A day of imperfection
My god, what am I like? So yesterday I wrote about showing up on time for our Write-In’s and today I turn up late for Ruby’s reading celebration? – What the heck, like? I hate it when I find my own ‘behaviour’ unacceptable. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.’ I know, but . . . So…
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Reliving The Hardest Parts of Our Past
One of the hardest chapters for me to write was about what happened in a blue Volvo when I was about 5. It’s one of those #metoo stories I never told. Buried in my subconscious, it first raise it’s ugly head, when in my teens, my boyfriend and I played at having sex. When authors…
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The Shitty First Draft
Donna’s Book on Fire module on the Shitty First Draft really pissed me off. I know that every time I have a strong emotion around something, especially the kind of resistance I felt against the Shitty First Draft lesson – there’s something juicy in it for me to learn. I had to give this lesson…
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On Writing Memoir
I don’t want to write a memoir. It’s too raw and scary. Too ‘laying it all on the line,’ too vulnerable. I’m afraid I won’t find the #TRUTH, I’m afraid my story will be lopsided, with only my point of view. For whatever happened to me, happened because of something else that happened to someone else.…
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Ambassador Iseult Fitzgerald
“Working with Vig was an absolute pleasure. Her images captured the cultural ties between Greece and Ireland beautifully. We’ve proudly used the photographs across all our platforms, and the head shots of myself and my team are among our favourites.” – Ambassador Iseult Fitzgerald Photographs that tell your Brand Story! As the Irish Ambassador to…
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Author Roisin Meany
“I create characters and then they tell me what they want to do. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we have to negotiate. That’s roughly how it goes.” — Roisin Meany
If you like these articles you will love my emails 🙂 They’re a roundup of what happened and lessons learned since my last email. I love a good email conversation. To me, emails stand as the last frontier of sharing our life writing. It is just like writing letters. Journaling and letter writing were two of my favourite things to do when I backpacked through Australia and Southeast Asia in the early ’90s. That’s when I met Shane. Email is the most intimate we can be with each other, over distance, through written words. If you like my writing you will love my emails. Get them here and I’ll see you, within minutes, in your inbox. Thank you for reading. I am grateful you are here. 🧡
Much Love and Light
Vig 🧡
Post List #3
Egypt ⛵️ Nile Cruise – Aswan By Night
The promenade is teeming with people taking their evening stroll along the banks of the Nile, or selling their wares of ‘Made in China’ souvenirs of Egyptian pharaohs, gods and monuments. We cross the busy road and trail off to…
Egypt ⛵️ Nile Cruise – Aswan High Dam and Temples of Philae
Aswan High Dam The 4-kilometre long embankment dam built across the Nile in Aswan created one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. With a surface area of more than 5,000 square kilometres, Lake Nasser spills across the border into Sudan and offer…
Egypt ⛵️ Nile Cruise – Kom Ombo and Edfu
Kom Ombo Temple An enigmatic ruin, Kom Ombo rises from the banks of the Nile. Once a major pilgrimage site for Ancient Egyptians, she is a dedication to Sobek the crocodile God and Horus, the Falcon God. Surrounded by walls…
Egypt ⛵️ Nile Cruise – Valley of the Kings and Queens and Colossi of Memnon
Valley of the Kings By 9 the next morning we’re chugging along on the little train that brings us to the tomb of Tutankhamun, but we don’t enter here. According to Ahmed the best place to visit King Tut is…